Stable surfaces and free boundary marginally outer trapped surfaces

Abstract

We explore various notions of stability for surfaces embedded and immersed in spacetimes and initial data sets. The interest in such surfaces lies in their potential to go beyond the variational techniques which often underlie the study of minimal and CMC surfaces. We prove two versions of Christodoulou–Yau estimate for \({\mathbf {H}}\)-stable surfaces, a Cohn-Vossen type inequality for non-compact stable marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS), and a global theorem on the topology of \({\mathbf {H}}\)-stable surfaces. Moreover, we give a definition of capillary stability for MOTS with boundary. This notion of stability leads to an area upper bound inequality and a local splitting theorem for free boundary stable MOTS. Finally, we establish an index estimate and a diameter estimate for free boundary MOTS. These are straightforward generalizations of Chen–Fraser–Pang and Carlotto–Franz results for free boundary minimal surfaces, respectively.